Somewhere above his head a seagull cried. The sky was a gentle blue. Summer was on its way.
Due process was coming to an end.
This was to be the final scene of the Inquisitorial process, his auto-da-fé, the Act of Faith where he would be sentenced, and the sentence carried out. Pettigrew imagined himself with a smile on his face. This was where he would escape the trap of victimhood and retribution.
One of the sailors pointed to an open gate in the side-rail. He padded over and looked down. The drop looked to be about 60 feet. In front of him was nothing but the blue of the Pacific Ocean. To his left, he could see the coast. He guessed that they were maybe a mile or so out of Valparaíso. He thought of Cerro Los Placeres, of what he was leaving behind. What he had already left behind, his parents, his sister. What they would think of him? How would they mourn?
‘Turn around.’
He did as he was told, facing his executioners with equanimity. There were four of them. Three were pointing guns at his chest. They looked scared witless, as if the exhausted, naked, delirious, broken man in front of them was poised to run amok.
Squinting, Pettigrew looked at them expectantly. The trio with guns were only boys – teenagers with faces that were round and smooth and questioning. Not so long ago, that had been him. But these boys were not like him. They were torturers, murderers, liars and thieves. They were missing something that should make them human. Still, he couldn’t hate them. Despite everything, he felt a pang of empathy. How difficult must all this be for them, to be put in this position? Ten years from now, or twenty, thirty, would they remember this day? Would it be a defining moment in their lives? Would they ever suffer from depression? Nightmares? Insomnia? Would they ever atone for their sins?
Their fingers tightened on the triggers of the ancient-looking rifles. One of the boys turned to the fourth man, who looked older than the rest, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. His voice quivered as he asked: ‘Shall I shoot him?’
‘What?’ The older man tried to laugh but only a hoarse mumble came out, as if he was trying to clear his throat. He looked past the priest and into the wide blue yonder. ‘And waste a bullet?’
The boy blushed with embarrassment and he lowered his gun. His companions followed suit, and the trio slouched away like kids who have just had their football confiscated by an annoyed neighbour. The older man sniffed theatrically and spat at his feet. He swayed back on his heels and then stepped forward, not looking at the priest; not looking away either. Six long steps brought him to within inches of Pettigrew’s face. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked shattered.
A wave of euphoria swept over the priest. His time had come at last.
Here I am, good and gentle Jesus.
There was an almost imperceptible nod of recognition before the officer placed the fingertips of his left hand on Pettigrew’s chest. The priest looked down at the man’s hand and then back at his face. It was the face of a man who passed no judgement.
With great fervour, I pray and ask You to instil in me genuine convictions of faith, hope and love . . .
The sailor took another step forward, pushing gently, as if he was walking through a half-open door.
Pettigrew’s jaw ached as a smile broke across his face. Agatha is going to kill me, he thought. In slow motion, he fell backwards into space. Arms outstretched, he finally embraced his fate.
. . . with true sorrow for my sins and a firm resolve to amend them.
FIFTEEN
Heading north, Carlyle and Joe walked up Endell Street, enjoying the warm sunshine. It had been a slow morning in the fight against crime in the capital, and the atmosphere in Charing Cross police station was soporific. Despite his best intentions, Carlyle had still not completed his report into the Mills case. Partly that was down to ennui; partly it was a determination – inherited from both his parents – to look every gift horse that came along in the mouth, very carefully indeed. With the last traces of wife-murderer Henry washed from the tarmac outside, the Mills case was now firmly closed. It had solved itself. This was, Carlyle knew as well as anyone, a good thing. Two unnatural deaths accounted for was a nice little gift for the statisticians and the performance tables. All he had to do was wrap it all up in some understated prose, hand it over to Carole Simpson and then everyone would be happy. If something else had come through the door, demanding his time and attention, maybe he would have done that. But, apart from Mills, all he had on his plate at the moment was a domestic, where the wife was battering the husband, and a spate of pickpocketings around Cambridge Circus. Not enough to keep a grown man occupied.
As much to avoid these other cases as anything else, Carlyle was reluctant to close the Mills case just yet. Joe was not impressed when Carlyle told him that he had decided they should take another look at the Millses’ flat. However, the prospect of stopping off for a mid-morning snack on the way won him over. As they reached the top of Endell Street, the usual traffic jam came into view. This was where High Holborn, St Giles High Street, Bloomsbury Street and Shaftesbury Avenue converged. Traffic that knew where it was going mixed with traffic lost in Covent Garden’s tortuous one-way system. Gridlock was the norm here, and a familiar cacophony of horns and shouts greeted the two policemen as they approached. Carlyle did a quick calculation in his head; they would have to cross five roads and fourteen lanes of traffic to reach Ridgemount Mansions, which was barely a quarter of a mile away. Not for the first time, he cursed the city’s ineffectual Mayor. Despite ostentatiously cycling to work once or twice a month, Christian Holyrod was criminally soft on the Congestion Charge that had been introduced by a predecessor in an attempt to get people out of their cars and on to public transport. Carlyle, a Central London resident, firmly believed that it should cost fifty pounds a day, or even a hundred, to drive your car into the centre of London. Hell, if you were serious about improving things, why not ban private cars altogether? Or only allow electric vehicles?
The current £10 charge was a complete joke, Carlyle thought. The traffic was as bad as ever. Meanwhile, all you ever heard was the endless moaning of lazy rich people who thought that it was their inalienable human right to clog the place up with their monster, gas-guzzling, road-hogging 4x4s, popularly known as ‘Chelsea tractors’. These were the people who got Holyrod elected, so the charge wouldn’t be raised to a sensible level any time soon.
It was only after they had slalomed through two lanes of stationary traffic that Carlyle realised that this particular jam was primarily the result of a number 55 bus which had been brought to a halt at a forty-five-degree angle across three lanes of traffic at the corner of Bloomsbury Street and St Giles High Street. Standing in the middle of Shaftesbury Avenue, it took him a little while longer to appreciate that the bus was also on the wrong route. The 55, a single-operator, red double-decker Plaxton President, which came in from Leyton in the east, normally went along Bloomsbury Way and New Oxford Street, before terminating at Oxford Circus. For some reason, it had left its route and was a block south of where it should be.
Bemused, Carlyle took a couple of steps forward and squinted at the vehicle, which was about twenty feet in front of him. The 55 wasn’t indicating that it was out of service and he could see that a couple of passengers were still on board. Nor did the driver appear injured or incapacitated in any way. Rather, he was sitting in his cab like a lemon, watching the chaos unfold all around him, seemingly oblivious to a couple of tourists who were standing straight in front of the bus, videoing him.